Then and Now

In a fragmented world, inundated with images, sound bites, and layers of reactions so deep that the source material is all but forgotten—where do we look? In an era of disenfranchisement, of an abundance of choice, of political upheaval—how do we see the whole? These questions hover beneath the surface of Georgia Gardner Gray’s exhibition “Chrysalis,” on view at Regen Projects until March 29. In the Los Angeles gallery, disparate scenes from Civil War reenactments and modern-day Amish life butt up against women undressing in fitting rooms, red tags peeking out of discarded clothing. All of which that surround, a large, spindly metallic structural frame in the middle of the room that was, for a period, a set for a play connects various vignettes of American life (the influencer, the devoutly religious, the artist, the comedian), all connected by the daily route of an Amazon delivery man.

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“We are back in the thick of it,” says Gardner Gray, when I ask her about her thoughts on the state of the world today. “Chrysalis” marks her first large-scale solo presentation in the U.S.—along with a string of performances staged within the exhibition (her fifth play to date)—and after opening day, the New York-based artist is taking a much needed break with her soon-to-be husband in Majorca, off the coast of Spain. “In some way, the only way to deal with these situations is to look back and address the past because,” she continues. “What else do we have? We can't predict the future.”

Artists might not be able to predict tomorrow, but they can offer alternate ways of looking. We can't predict the future but we should try. And how else but by examining our relationship with the past: how we emerge from it, how we repeat it. “There's always going to be an image that's being reinterpreted or rethought or remade,” says Gardner Gray. “We've done so much to demystify originality, but then still we are so almost Puritanical about it at the same time.” 

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In The Amish, 2025, a woman rakes potatoes—the only clue that places her in the 21st century are her dirty sneakers. Elsewhere, another group of women dressed up like Scarlett O’Hara are given away by their red Solo cups in Belles, 2025. And Watchers, 2025, depicts two spectators (one in Converse) sitting on a picnic blanket with a plate of chips against the backdrop of a Civil War reenactment—a fake body dressed in a confederate uniform hangs from a noose on the tree behind them. In each scene, Gardner Gray’s subjects appear awash in golden light or bathed in a blue haze; context is obfuscated by unexpected bright secondary colors and drawn back in by little details.

Gardner Gray’s paintings capture the dissonance of today with little regard to the historical imperative to paint modernity in its entirety. “There’s a spectacle just in going against that choice,” she says. Rather than zoom out and look at the whole, the painter opts to focus on alienated individuals and groups on the fringe: religious idealists and those who reenact the past. “You are literally traveling in time when you paint, and everything is allowed."

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Time travel is not only the desire of the painter, but one that is shared by society writ large. “At this point, we're all living in some kind of nostalgia. It's a really weird period, where everyone wants to pretend they're not living in the now," Gardner Gray agrees. "Art always wants to be avant-garde, and there's something even in that notion that starts to feel nostalgic."

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The artist turns to what is around her, including growing up next to an Amish farmers’ market on Roosevelt Island. The interiors of women trying on clothes mirror the types she sees on the street: “There’s this New York woman, who's probably single, maybe in her 40s. She's comfortable but there's sadness there, too,” she explains of Midtown (Large), 2025, in which a silhouetted woman in workout clothes looks out into the night from the window of her high-rise apartment. “Then the changing rooms are younger women who are still striving. They're buying clothes off the sale rack, and they're trying things on.” Those feel less melancholy for the artist. “They're in this moment of transformation.” These scenes like Changing Room 1 and Changing Room 3, both 2025, offer liminal space, semi-public and semi-private, where identity can be tried on for size and aesthetic details belie corporate motives. And the historical reenactments? An answer to the epic historical battles scenes by Francisco Goya and Édouard Manet.

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Modernity is stuck in a feedback loop that has tangled in numerous directions. “Where do we go from here?” I ask. “I think that linear way forward is over,” she replies. “We've lost a consensus. There are all these little pockets of things going on, and they all are valid.” 

The choice of where we direct our attention is the only agency we still have—but even then, our choices are mediated by factors that we can't quite understand, like algorithms that are too depressing to wrap our minds around. “To get a clear picture is really impossible,” says Gardner Gray. 

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The painter outlines a new type of present. “You have all these things co-existing, and there’s no general agreement upon what's even happening. We have to confront this,” she offers, pausing, “I think it's a really hard position in which to make art but then it's also really exciting at the same time because it's unprecedented—we're living through some major historical moment that our tools are not crafted for.”

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“Georgia Gardner Gray: Chrysalis” is on view through March 29, 2025 at Regen Projects at 6750 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90038.